‘I want to ask about a rumour I came across this week. You started the franchise with a sum of money you received as a gift or an inheritance.’

‘This is true,’ said Lucky, forcing himself to look at Emily. ‘Your father gave me the money in 1946.’

‘Lucky, Christ! How many times did I ask you about him?’

Emily leaned forward on the couch as if to seize something on the coffee table.

Lucky had tried to give her nothing. Still she tunnelled towards her father, day after day.

Here was an answer. Here was a story Lucky told himself for many years before he understood the truth.

‘There was a fire,’ he said. At the Cafe Achillion, in 1946, and his sister-in-law died, he explained. Her name was Penelope Asproyerakas. He spelled the surname. She had applied to university; she wanted to be a scientist. There was a fire and the police identified arson as the cause, but they could not find the person responsible. How hard did they look? At first they questioned Lucky’s father-in-law. Then they spoke to cafe owners elsewhere in Sydney, Greeks who might have held some grudge against the family. It was easy to imagine the arsonist committed an undetectable crime, but it was easier to imagine the police gave up the investigation early, supposing it to be the result of an unfathomable feud among migrants. Ian Asquith must have read about the fire in a newspaper. A year or so earlier they had met in a bar, but they weren’t friends, they weren’t anything to each other until the destruction of the Achillion. A few weeks after the fire, Asquith tracked down Lucky and offered him a large sum of money to rebuild the lost business, or to use the gift however he and Valia saw fit. They assumed Asquith was rich—he gave that impression—and could afford the sum. (But he wasn’t rich, said Emily. He must have given you all the money he possessed.) Asquith returned to England and he never wrote to Lucky, never responded to letters. He wanted the gift to be a secret. That was all he asked. Now Lucky apologised for his fidelity to this request. He didn’t know Asquith. The money and the secret were their only ties.

‘That’s why he made the painting,’ said Emily. She did not write the story down; she didn’t need to. ‘He did an important thing.’

‘That must be why.’

What good would the truth do, after all this time? Lucky thought. I don’t want to bring more pain into the world.

‘I need to be careful of the stories that people tell me,’ she said.

‘I have paperwork. I’ll show you the paper. Give me a day to find it.’